On account of their transparency, as I may call it, the clearness with which they retain the primitive forms of their radicals, they allow us to trace out the growth of words, and thus reveal the operations of the native mind by a series of witnesses whose testimony cannot be questioned. Often curious associations of ideas are thus disclosed, very instructive to the student of mankind. Many illustrations of this could be given, but I do not wish to assail your ears by a host of unknown sounds, so I shall content myself with one, and that taken from the language of the Lenāpé, or Delaware Indians.
I shall endeavor to trace out one single radical in that language, and show you how many, and how strangely diverse ideas were built up upon it.
The radical which I select is the personal pronoun of the first person, I, Latin Ego. In Delaware this is a single syllable, a slight nasal, Nē, or Ni.
Let me premise by informing you that this is both a personal and a possessive pronoun; it means both I and mine. It is both singular and plural, both I and we, mine and our.
The changes of the application of this root are made by adding suffixes to it.
I begin with ni'hillan, literally, “mine, it is so,” or “she, it, is truly mine,” the accent being on the first syllable, ni', mine. But the common meaning of this verb in Delaware is more significant of ownership than this tame expression. It is an active, animate verb, and means, “I beat, or strike, somebody.” To the rude minds of the framers of that tongue, ownership meant the right to beat what one owned.
We might hope this sense was confined to the lower animals; but not so. Change the accent from the first to the second syllable, ni'hillan, to nihil'lan, and you have the animate active verb with an intensive force, which signifies “to beat to death,” “to kill some person;” and from this, by another suffix, you have nihil'lowen, to murder, and nihil'lowet, murderer. The bad sense of the root is here pushed to its uttermost.
But the root also developed in a nobler direction. Add to ni'hillan the termination ape, which means a male, and you have nihillape, literally, “I, it is true, a man,” which, as an adjective, means free, independent, one’s own master, “I am my own man.” From this are derived the noun, nihillapewit, a freeman; the verb nihillapewin, to be free; and the abstract, nihillasowagan, freedom, liberty, independence. These are glorious words; but I can go even farther. From this same theme is derived the verb nihillape-wheu, to set free, to liberate, to redeem; and from this the missionaries framed the word nihillape-whoalid, the Redeemer, the Saviour.
Here is an unexpected antithesis, the words for a murderer and the Saviour both from one root! It illustrates how strange is the concatenation of human thoughts.
These are by no means all the derivatives from the root ni, I.